


Fairest Of Them All

by Manna_di_San_Nicola



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anachronistic, Anal Sex, BDSM, Bisexual Female Character, Brainwashing, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Child Murder, Child Soldiers, Cunnilingus, Espionage, F/F, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Gender Dysphoria, Identity Issues, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Misogyny, Mind Control, Misgendering, Multi, Murder, Obsession, Period-Typical Homophobia, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Soviet Union, Statutory Rape, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 07:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3480179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manna_di_San_Nicola/pseuds/Manna_di_San_Nicola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I used to be so jealous of girls like you. I would have done anything to walk like you, to talk like you, but now… I can be anybody I want.” </p><p>The Evil Queen had her own story long before she decided to eat Snow White's heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairest Of Them All

**Author's Note:**

> After a lifetime of avoiding the Period-Appropriate Bigotry tags in favour of alternate universes and just plain “I’M HERE, I’M QUEER, AND I’M GOING TO BURN DOWN REGENCY ENGLAND AND MAKE OUT WITH MY SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE LOVER ON THE ASHES” (there’s depressingly little of that to be found, actually), I’ve become what I hate the most. That’s right, kids – it’s the trans Dottie AU literally nobody asked for! Don’t bore me with comments about how trans people weren’t a thing in the 40s, I will throw my tea in your face.

The first name she ever had was the name her mother had given her – Aleksandr. It was the only memento she had of her – the girl had barely been a child herself and birth was hard for a small body. It had been unfortunate that she’d been born a boy, the matrons of the children’s home had said, when space in the girls’ quarters had just opened up.

 

Later in life, she considered their belief that she was a boy her first lie.

 

Sasha, as she made it clear she preferred, enjoyed lying to the matrons. She would steal things from them – little pretty things. Whatever Sasha wanted, she took. And she was good at taking. Whenever they noticed the latest item missing, she made a game out of hiding from them. She would shift into corners and under beds to dodge their eyes. Once, she even jumped off of the stairs and made her home in the rafters.

 

It wasn’t that they ever suspected her, not poor stupid Sasha, but it was fun. Maybe she would have been kinder to them if they’d let her grow her hair into long beautiful curls. Like Ozma.

 

Great Comrade Stalin believed that the orphans of the Revolution deserved the very best in education and care, so Sasha’s home even received a translated American book or two. She had loved _The Marvelous Land of Oz_ , loved it so much that the book would fall open to the page of Tip’s transformation into Ozma if laid on its spine. It made her heart race to read that. But then one of the matrons took the book away – it promoted deviant behaviour, she said and wouldn’t explain why.

 

Sasha had a feeling she knew – that loving Ozma so much and wishing there was a witch to cast that same spell for her was wrong. So she lied about that too.

 

Sasha even lied to the other girls in the children’s home. They hated her because the matrons needed someone to blame for her thefts. They hated her for being strange and wanting to be their friend. They hated her for watching the way they moved and the way their hair bounced and wishing very very hard. So she started lying that she hated them back. She didn’t need them anyway, if they believed that stupid lie about her being a boy.

 

The boys… what was there to say about boys? They believed what was in front of them. They believed that she was weak and she let them. When she outsmarted them, she let them believe that she’d just been lucky. When she didn’t care to fight them, she let them believe she’d just vanished – the matrons weren’t the only ones she could hide from.

 

It was that manner of day, another hiding and lying day in her seventh year of them, when the Instructor came. Sasha had made her way to the rafters with a tube of fancy Elizabeth Arden lipstick when she’d heard thundering footsteps. Every girl in the home had been called together in that one room, arranged into a line like an open Matryoshka set.

 

The dolls on display failed to impress. A new woman, older than the matrons and twice as terrifying, assessed each girl like a vegetable in the market and found every one to be spoiled. She barely spent any time at all on the older girls, as if they were a chore to cross off before the girls Sasha’s age. Nearly as soon as they’d been gathered, they were dismissed.

 

Though her back was to Sasha, she heard the woman ask in more of a disgusted statement than a question, “Those are the only girls you have.” The matron nodded, looking more afraid of the new woman than even any of the girls had been and only growing more meek at whatever had to be on her face at the confirmation. “You there. Come down from those rafters.”

 

It felt as though the woman had reached into Sasha’s chest and squeezed her heart. She did what she could to scrub the lipstick from her face, but there was no time to keep the woman waiting and she knew it was a damning red smear around her lips. She fell into a crouch as always, her legs used to the impact by then.

 

“Aleksandr! How did you get up there?!”

 

There was something in the woman’s eyes, a sharp glint of interest at the way Sasha had performed. That was more than any of the other girls had gotten. But, whatever it was, it winked out when the matron called her that name. That wouldn’t do – she wanted it.

 

The matron continued to fuss, oblivious as they all were to the way she and this woman had started to dance. “And what is that on your face?” Sasha met the woman’s eyes from under the matron’s arm. She had a feeling this woman would not be lied to, but the truth… It was a risk, but so was jumping off of the stairs.

 

“Lipstick.” She said. ‘I’m as much a girl as any of them.’ She didn’t say. ‘I’m the one you want.’ She didn’t scream. ‘Look at me.’

 

The matron squawked and looked at the woman as if she would kill them both for Sasha’s actions, but the woman simply tilted her head. There was something new in her eyes, like a more cautious twin to the earlier interest.

 

“Get out.” If the matron still thought the woman would kill her, it wasn’t enough to keep her at Sasha’s side. “You stole this lipstick.”

 

She didn’t know precisely how depraved it was being what she was, a girl pretending to be a boy even with her skin, but stealing seemed minor next to it. “Yes.” Besides, she still wasn’t sure this woman would believe any lies she could tell.

 

“And no one noticed.”

 

That part was nothing to be ashamed of, so Sasha dared to smile at her own power. “Yes.” She tapped the pocket that held the lipstick in question; if no one asked for it back, she wouldn’t volunteer it.

 

“As no one noticed that you are capable of crawling like a spider to impossible heights.”

 

“People see what they want.”

 

“What you want.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“What you want is to wear lipstick.”

 

“The other girls do.”

 

“Other. You say you are a girl, then, Aleksandr.” There was nothing in the woman’s voice, positive or negative, but that name still made her lash out. Shouldn’t this clever woman see through every lie, even that one?

 

“Sasha. I mean…” Too late, she realized that speaking out of turn was not in her best interest, perhaps not the way to get what she wanted. It was fragile as a cobweb; she had to walk carefully or break it. “Yes.”

 

“Comrade Stalin has no place for deviants in his future.” But the words were bland, more of a quote than a conviction, and there was still that intrigue in her eyes. “What would you give, little Sasha, to have the world see what you want?” Just like that, Sasha remembered Mombi – the evil witch who had terrorized Tip, but still turned him back into Ozma in the end.

 

“Anything. Everything!”

 

“Then you will. Gather your things – every trace of your existence.”

 

Sasha did, down to the last stolen trinket. The boys she’d been forced to share a room with had stared at her, confused, but she didn’t care. She was free of them. When she came back down the stairs, she saw one of the matrons hand the woman a folder – her folder. What was in there, she wondered? Information about who her mother had been, perhaps even who her father had been?

That didn’t matter either, not just because the woman set the folder ablaze when they stepped outside. A military vehicle was waiting for them, the kind people were pulled into when they disappeared forever and not even pictures marked that they had ever lived at all. It didn’t worry her terribly. Even at her most suspicious, Sasha didn’t think that the NKVD would set up an elaborate sting for one deviant child – especially since there’d been no way to know she’d be in the room with the other girls. Still, the dark windows sent a chill down her spine the way they did every orphan’s.

 

“Stop.” Sasha turned just as she’d been about to enter the van. The woman’s wrinkled hand darted out like a viper, faster than a woman so old should have moved, and caught her face in a vise grip. The pain was secondary to the shock – she had played Sasha’s own game against her. Sasha had only seen what she had wanted her to see. It made her furious as much as it took her breath away.

 

“I will let you be a girl, Sasha, but the price will be high. Do not think I consider you anything but disgusting and that this is anything but a chance for you to redeem your sins by serving Mother Russia. Encouraging your abnormality is an experiment, one I have no intention of disclosing to others. You will be judged twice as harshly as the other girls because of your flaws. This you accept?”

 

Other girls? “Yes!”

 

“Disappoint me even once and I will abandon you in the zone – the men there have their own uses for pretty young queers with rouged lips.”

 

They rode in silence, Sasha turning the words over and over in her head. She wasn’t naïve – there had been older boys at the children’s home, boys who’d added a certain edge to their taunts about how weak she was, boys that hiding from had more at stake than dodging a punch. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint this woman, but the life or death edge just solidified her conviction. Though the next thing the woman spoke still surprised her, foolishly.

 

“You will abandon the name Aleksandr, which I doubt will trouble you. The diminuative ‘Sasha’, perhaps more so. But you must learn to respond to names other than that you were born with. Today, you are Petra.”

 

She nodded, though her face still hurt from the woman’s grasp. As she processed the demand, it did make sense that giving everything included who she’d been. How hard could it be to cast aside the deviant and be the girl? She wanted to. The car came to a stop in front of the largest building Sa… Petra had ever seen. “Welcome to the Red Room.”

 

She could never say she felt ‘welcome’, but she felt like she belonged for the first time at the Red Room. Every girl there was a deceptive orphan with something to prove, so she should have blended into the crowd. How funny it was that that was the first time she didn’t want to hide, oh no. She wanted to be the best of them.

 

Being the best, pushing herself twice as hard as girls pushing themselves to be the best, meant that she passed out a lot in the first few weeks. When she felt it coming, then she wanted to hide. That she succeeded long enough to adjust to her decreased ration supply made her think that perhaps the Instructor had a soft spot for her after all.

 

She didn’t test that theory. Nor did she let out a peep after any of her nightmares about the men in the camps ruining her lipstick, even when the blood on her raw wrist looked just like a smeared mouth.

 

By the very nature of her stay there, Petra deserved the top marks in her deception classes, but her other instructors knew nothing (or would say nothing, if they did know). So she earned them all the same. Hiding, acrobatics – she would have laughed at how easy it was to excel in those, even there. The combat courses were tougher – knife-work was a delight, but she struggled with guns.

 

English was difficult as well, though she loved to watch the picture shows. Especially _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_ – the Queen made her eyes wide the way Ozma had, the way she controlled a room and even her own appearance. It was everything Petra wanted to be, even if she fell to her death in the end. Maybe it hadn’t been her death – people could survive falls, couldn’t they?

 

English became easier when she started watching Anya as much as the films. Whenever she could, Anya would sit next to her. When the instructors weren’t looking, she whispered translations for every sentence to help Petra learn and explained each film afterwards if she could. Anya was the best student in English class.

 

Anya was the first person she had ever loved.

 

She tried to hide the way her face flushed when Anya would whisper to her, but the Instructor noticed. The Instructor noticed everything. She knew what she saw in their little flirtation – that Petra was proving more boy than intended. She wanted to scream at herself for risking everything; instead, she pushed herself even further and savoured the taste of shared bread.

 

It couldn’t last. They were chosen, barely before another word was said, for the first spar of the class. Something in the air told her, as if she couldn’t guess, that it was more than a spar. She knew, like Sasha had known why the matron had taken her book, how it would end when she had Anya pinned. Still, Petra looked at the Instructor for the final word because she could obey. She’d promised to never disappoint. When it came, she lied to herself again – Anya would have stood in her way. Anya would have done the same to her. Anya was Snow White and she was the Queen – she had to die for her to be fairest of them all.

 

That night, she tugged at the handcuff on her bed – not to escape, never to escape, but to let the pain of it digging into her flesh distract her from her breaking heart.

 

When she woke, they gave her food for the first time that week. She smiled and lied to herself that it tasted sweeter because she didn’t have to share it. By the end of the next week, her smile was real.

 

She didn’t bother to make any new friends. Without Anya, Petra was the top-marked in everything. What was even better was that the other girls looked at her, the way she moved and the way her hair bounced now that she could let it grow long, with that mix of fear and admiration and hatred.

 

What more could she need?

 

But this was fragile too. Some of the older girls started to bleed, later than civilian girls because of their comparatively increased activity and decreased diet. Petra started having nightmares again about what was inevitable, what she had seen in boys at the children’s home. Every night behind her eyes, hair sprouted from her chin and under her arms and everywhere until she looked like a bear. That thing between her legs would get bigger and bigger until it couldn’t be taped down anymore. She’d welcome the camps then – perhaps the men would be kind enough to kill her instead of raping her.

 

When the Instructor called her to the medical wing, Petra was sure that would be the end of it – the reign of Ozma was over. 

 

The Instructor did not look up from her notes, but began the conversation from the sound of Petra’s footsteps. She scolded herself for stepping so gracelessly, letting the weight of her fear show in her movement. “Did you know, Petra, that there are German doctors making some very intriguing discoveries in your field of deviance?”

 

“I didn’t, Madam.” Her field? Of course she had known that there were others like her. She didn’t have a name for it, but there had to be a specific something that the matrons were afraid when they’d thrown away the story of Tip. But what did that matter here and now? She didn’t ask - a student of the Red Room never let the target know that they were gathering information.

 

“They were more liberal than our glorious Union about such things before it was no longer convenient for Hitler to indulge Rohm. His party burned much of the research, of course.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Still, what we already had should suffice.” The Instructor put down the folder at last and stood from the doctor’s desk. She moved over to a suitcase on one of the nearby examination bench, her old quick hands resting on top of the leather.

 

“Suffice, Madam?”

 

“Your delusion comes with a time limit: puberty.” Petra could not have agreed more, but she kept herself from visibly flinching. She knew that the Instructor knew about her nightmares, silent and non-disruptive to the other girls as she’d been. That did not mean she had to admit to them. “But I am never wrong about a perfect candidate and I was not wrong about you, this point of contention aside. It must therefore be removed.”

 

Hope dared to build in Petra’s heart, made bolder by the rare praise the Instructor had gifted her with. “Nothing would make me happier, Madam.” She wanted to fall to her knees and beg, like she was just a deviant again wanting to be seen. ‘Save me from this. Save me from this like you saved me from the children’s home.’

 

The Instructor snapped the suitcase open. From within, she removed a single syringe filled with liquid. Part of Petra still wondered if it was poison, despite the Instructor’s implied desire to keep her as an asset. She would drive it into her own heart, happier and more knowingly than Snow White, to spare her the coming curse. “This is oestrogen, replicated from the notes of chemists of Berlin. It will do for your chest and hips what a girl’s puberty would do for hers. You won’t even have to bleed.” 

 

Petra clenched her fists to keep from snatching the syringe (not that she could) and plunging the needle into her neck that second. Even knowing it was still hers, she wanted to cry when the Instructor closed the suitcase again and took her notes in hand.

 

“To stop the boy’s puberty you are due to have, we will cut your penis and testicles off. With luck and these reports, we may be able to fashion the mess into a hole that looks like a woman’s. If we are unlucky, we will just make do by only sending you to seduce the kind of men who like to fuck a woman in the ass. Simple.”

 

Petra couldn’t breathe – it was more than she’d hoped for. “How soon can we start?” She might as well have never taken a deception class for all that she failed to keep the sheer bliss from her voice. She lied to herself that there wasn’t any fear mixed in, that the pain of trying to cut it off herself once hadn’t been too much to bear, and that surely it wouldn’t hurt if a doctor did it.

 

“You are eleven, Petra. We are lucky to have been spared thus far – I will not wait another day and find you’ve grown a beard overnight.”

 

The Instructor left the examination room for one of the operating rooms, gesturing for her to follow without a backwards glance. Inside was a doctor Petra did not know; she bit her tongue tightly to keep her nerves at bay. The anxiety of someone seeing her body started to crawl under her skin like spiders. For his part, the doctor only whispered to the Instructor concerns about her age. How could she do such a thing to a child (a little _boy_ were his exact words), he asked as if Petra wasn’t there, wasn’t willing and ready if they would just shut up and do it.

 

Blood filled her mouth as she decided to move for them. By the next time the doctor looked at her, Petra was naked on the surgery bed, her clothes folded next to the nearby sink and her eyes glaring. The Instructor’s face never moved, but something in her eyes almost looked like pride.

 

The man kept his eyes on her face as he stepped forward, placing a hand on her bare shoulder. “Petya, my boy…” Mistake after mistake – her hand shot out and tightly squeezed the nerve cluster between his thumb and index finger. He barely had time to scream before she was yanking him forward. Simultaneously, she slid back on the bed so that his head fell to the mattress for the seconds before her feet went to his chin and behind his head.

 

“Petra. My name is Petra.” The r rolled off her tongue so she was sure he heard it even as he struggled to break her grip. “You will do this surgery. Not because I want it…” And she finally regained control of her voice, so it did not shake with how much she wanted it. “… but because you are ordered. If you cannot follow orders…” She looked at the Instructor, as she had before she broke Anya’s neck. Doing the same to him would be nothing compared to that, even if killing this doctor meant ending her time at the Red Room and dooming her to growing as men did.

 

That thing close to pride still flashed in the Instructor’s eyes. It made Petra warm. “Answer the girl, Doctor Kudrin. Can you follow orders?”

 

“Please… I have a daughter…”

 

“Lyudmila, yes. She is why I selected you, your work notwithstanding. If you prove difficult, I will lose a promising student. It is only logical to have a replacement in mind for that unfortunate possibility.” Petra did not take her eyes away from the Instructor as she spoke, so she knew the doctor stopped his struggles only from the lack of movement under her feet. “Your cooperation and silence benefits everyone, especially her. Think how she might flourish if your family had Leviathan’s favour.”

 

The doctor was silent for nearly two minutes, but Petra’s grip did not waver once. “I will do it. Or I will try.” At the Instructor’s gesture, she realized the doctor, watching as he rubbed at his face. She did not bother listening to his muttering about how he wished he had more time, how this undertaking was nothing like his usual work. It would be done – that was all that mattered.

 

The next few moments were a blur, even before the anaesthesia; she doubted the Instructor would have been pleased with her inattentive behaviour, but she was so happy. When she awoke, she only knew that any time had passed at all from the different angle of the Sun’s light and her own new location – a hidden hospital bed, complete with its own handcuff. The drugs were still in her system; the pain would come later.

 

For now, Petra let her head fall back against the pillow and smiled.

 

She healed quickly and, while part of her knew it was because she was young and in exceptionally good health, it merely confirmed how right this decision was for her. Every month, Dr. Kudrin and the Instructor pulled her from her lessons for a day to evaluate what she had now. ‘Far from beautiful’ were the Instructor’s first words, but the first assessment remained ‘serviceable’ as long as Petra took care to stretch the wound open every night.

 

These appointments also served as a time for the Doctor to monitor her blood and the oestrogen she had started injecting herself with – it was still so new that anything could go wrong. No one even knew the effects of the semi-synthetic hormones on regular women, good or ill.

 

But Petra found results soon enough.

 

Without those male parts, she imagined her body was like a blank canvas and the oestrogen was paint – every new change showed dramatically with nothing to hinder it. By the time she was thirteen, her breasts had developed more quickly than any other girl in her batch, her baby fat slipping down to flare out her hips. There was a new envy in the other girls’ eyes now, one Petra devoured with more joy than their rations. 

 

With that development came the expected shift in her curriculum to seduction. The first time, she had flinched at the man returning her touches, foolishly afraid despite herself – as if her body hadn’t long since been fixed. By the tenth man, Petra had mastered that as well. By the twentieth, she’d moved past the need to say a word before the target was caught in her web.

 

Women were trickier. Deep down, part of Petra kept comparing her to her target – ‘is she more beautiful? Am I? Why can’t I walk the way she does, truly at ease, even after all this time?’ Women were less of a concern; the Instructor still took care to avoid placing her with them romantically. She couldn’t forget Anya either.

 

The time for whimsical education came to an end very quickly – even before Barbarossa, Leviathan had known that Hitler would turn against Comrade Stalin like the rapid dog he was. So they moved, even with the Great Architect’s certainty that the rest of the world would take care of the Axis problem for them. Like Sasha before her, Petra had to be discarded – no great loss when the world was hers.

 

Because she had been so promising as Petra, she had an exceptional endgame to achieve. The steps along the way were far from such. Kiss a man here for the incriminating photograph, kill a man there for a file, hardly remarkable times (with the exception of the beautiful knife she’d taken off of the man’s body). Her first taste of failure, true failure, was at Castle Kaufman. Remarkable or not, it had been infuriating to know that all of her hard work – all of her names and voices – had been for nothing. All because someone else had moved Abraham Erskine just a day before her planned strike.

 

The Queen had made life in a castle look so much more enjoyable in _Snow White_.

 

For the next four years, she punished herself for that failure – the self she chose to punish became known as Leila. Leila affixed herself to the side of Fyodor, a tired old man eager for the attentions of a young woman with a gun, and handled the menial work with him – recruitment into Leviathan, mostly, and the occasional cleaning house assignment. It was tedious, but it kept her close to home while preventing her from mucking up anything new. Even as a woman of eighteen, grown and graduated from the Red Room, Leila remembered the fears of Petra and even Sasha before her.

 

At Fyodor’s side, Leila met Dr. Johann Fennhoff.

 

Even before he spoke, something in Leila that was still Sasha recognized something about him. A certain craving, like the one she had felt for the Instructor’s attention so many years ago, and his words confirmed that he thought he could appease it by joining Leviathan. Fyodor had been confused, naturally, but that disappeared when Fennhoff mentioned the Finow Massacre. Unprofessional as the need of revenge was, several good soldiers had been pointlessly lost in Finow; there were few in Leviathan, the Red Room graduates aside, who did not want an answer and a reckoning.

 

Leila, for her part, wondered if perhaps she and the Doctor could help each other with what they wanted.

 

The trouble was how to introduce the idea of a partnership. She could not seduce Fennhoff; for all that he was a man, his knowledge of the mind meant he would see through her – possibly even all the way to that darkest secret. Sometimes, she thought for too long about how her life might have gone if Sasha had met the Doctor that day instead of the Instructor, what his idea of a solution to her deviance would have been. It was an unproductive train of thought – it made her sick and want to kill Fennhoff besides, just to be safe.

 

Still, it led Leila to the solution – if faced with a target that one could not lie to (just like the Instructor had been), the truth had to serve as her weapon.

 

“Dr. Fennhoff?” He smiled at her when she stopped him in the hall, as if she had not killed a man less than two feet from him. Leila appreciated that professionalism. “This may be rude of me, but I cannot help but notice that Fyodor – Colonel Starkovsky, that is to say – has been less than helpful in providing the resources for your investigation into the Finow tragedy?”

 

“It is not important, my dear.” The lie made him grimace. “We have a War to consider.”

 

“But, Doctor, is it not important to the people of our Union to know that such a nightmare could never befall them again? So many lost family.” ‘As you did,’ she did not have to say – she saw it play out on his face. “Would it not greatly benefit our morale to know that the animal responsible is brought to justice?”

 

“He does not deserve justice.” In that moment, the Doctor was more Devil than Faustus, for all that the grunts whispered he had sold his soul for his power to cloud the minds of men. She might have called it superstitious nonsense before the War, but there were very intriguing reports about HYDRA claiming an artefact of the Norse Gods, so nothing was beyond possible anymore.

 

“Of course you are right. The quiet bullet to the back of the head the secret police will give him if they find him…. Why, that is practically merciful compared to the poor souls of Finow. Still, it is the way of things, is it not?” Her words came with an apparent obliviousness to the Doctor’s still darkening face. “We can only trust Colonel Starkovsky’s judgment and hope that the NKVD agents eventually assigned to the case know what they are doing. A cold trail can be difficult to follow, after all.” Her eyes went to her watch, as if she cared about the time. “I am so sorry to trouble you for so long, Doctor. I know I should be more resilient against such horrors, but… somehow, I cannot make Finow leave my mind. Good day, Comrade.”

 

She had not taken five steps before the Doctor stopped her. “Leila, was it?” A smile danced across her lips for an instant before she turned with a blank face.

 

“It is today.”

 

“You and… Fyodor… are close, yes?”

 

Her eyes went to the floor with the shame she knew an unmarried woman was supposed to feel at such insinuations. “I have his ear at times.” It was amazing what the Colonel would let her ask of him if she asked it with a whip in hand. He had needed flagellation over the past four years almost as much as she had, just less metaphorically.

 

“Perhaps, if I approached him with your support, he would be more receptive to my proposal.”

 

This time, she smiled openly and extended her hand to Fennhoff. He grasped it with a look that said he knew he was touching the surest path to his destiny. “I agree, Doctor. Together, surely we could change his… _focus_.”

 

An hour under Leila’s care had Fyodor pliant any day; the Doctor was nearly overkill on the scrambled egg the Colonel called a mind. They left his chambers that day with a quaint little taskforce, though Fennhoff agreed it was best to keep Brannis and Demidov in the dark about the specifics of their mission. They were blunt instruments, likely to let their emotions get in the way if they knew whom they were hunting for. Leila did not have that problem.

 

Neither did Veronica.

 

Veronica met General John McGinnis when he returned home to Boston from the War. There had been some tragic gas explosion that had claimed his entire family, so he had no choice but to stay at the Parker House hotel. Veronica started there only days after the General began his stay; how lucky for her that one of the girls who’d worked there had just skipped town out of the blue.

 

Johnny, as the General insisted on being called, was a perfect gentleman and a doting lover –after the long weeks it took him to get over his wife. Johnny had trouble sleeping, though he hated to admit it or appear weak. It was only after a few drinks that he started to talk about his time in the War. Apparently, he’d worked with a man by the name of Howard Stark – yes, _the_ Howard Stark. Howard Stark had been everything they’d said in the papers – at least, that’s what Johnny had thought.

 

But Howard Stark had issues – at first, he wasn’t enough of a risk-taker, like with this Midnight Oil stuff Johnny had been sure would give the Allies the upper hand in some nowhere town called Finow. Then it turned out he wasn’t the genius everyone said at all. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault Stark’s invention hadn’t worked as advertised – what, was he supposed to think the man who’d made Captain America would goof up that badly? (Petra wanted to burst out of Veronica’s skin and scream that Abraham Erskine made Captain America.)

 

Johnny and Veronica parted ways amicably enough, as far as he was concerned. While Ida was establishing herself, she took a brief moment to step back into Veronica and send Johnny a telegraph. Veronica was concerned about Johnny’s sleeping habits and thought he should see a shrink (how lucky that she knew one) - all that stress could give a man a heart attack.

 

Howard Stark, Ida found, _was_ everything the papers had said and more. Three lives earlier, she had learned that a playboy reputation rarely meant a man was any good at pleasing a woman. It was worse for her because, no matter the name, her sensations down there remained and always would remain duller than born women. With due credit to Dr. Kudrin, he couldn’t have predicted Howard Stark’s notorious silver tongue. Similarly, without disrespect to the Instructor, she had made the kind of man who would fuck a woman in the ass sound like much less fun than he was. He was a prettier sight on his knees than Starkovsky, but anyone could have guessed that.

 

Accomplishing her objective had never been so much… _fun_.

 

So, of course, Brannis took a turn for the capitalist and soured everything.

 

No, not everything, she supposed - that was how Dottie met Agent Peggy Carter.

 

Lips red as blood, skin white as snow; looking at Peggy was like being shot. Dottie hurt for Peggy the way Petra had for Anya – she wanted her, she wanted to _be_ her. There was an innate glamour to her, a style even in her most casual moments. Dottie wanted to kiss her so tightly that she pulled that glamour from her lungs with every inhale. But, for a time, it was enough just knowing that she was outsmarting her. Her heart had raced seeing Peggy’s tears at Krzeminski’s death and seeing the lack of suspicion when Peggy’s eyes passed over her like she was just another table.

 

They’d had something of a close call with Otto Mink, puffed up nobody that he was, but Dottie took care of him easily enough. She even got a pretty new toy out of it. Peggy hadn’t suspected a thing; she’d just come home like any other day and blared her music. When they went out for breakfast together, Dottie created a tale about wanting to see the city; that and a bit of good luck gave her the means to see somewhere much more interesting (though Brooklyn had to be the bee’s knees for how Peggy talked it up).

 

Everything about Peggy’s room was neat and pretty as a picture, like the lady herself. She’d been trained to move without a trace, but it was still thrillingly naughty being there – it felt like every step she took left footprints like in pristine snow. She found her prize in no time at all, of course, but she didn’t leave just yet. She wanted to play just a bit longer.

 

She let it wash over her, every little thing she’d noticed about Peggy – the straightness of her spine, the furrow of her brow. Her hair almost seemed darker the longer she looked in the mirror. “Hello. I’m Peggy Carter.” She imagined that that boy in the picture loved her and that there were lazy days where she slept with her arms around him instead of pinned in place by a set of handcuffs. She’d never been someone’s girl before – what was it like to be loved? Did Dottie know? Had she gone steady with anyone back in Iowa?

 

She wasn’t sure who pocketed the lipstick – it felt like a Sasha gesture.

 

Killing the dentist for his office was a good way for Dottie to ground herself. Fennhoff was in position, the serpent in the SSR’s garden, and she knew that the endgame was within sight. Destroying two of Captain America’s allies once and for all would be the perfect penance for allowing him to be born. She could return to the Red Room with pride and, from there, be anyone she pleased – even (especially) someone better than Peggy Carter.

 

But the SSR escalated things – apparently, Leviathan had known before they had what Peggy did with her nights away from the Griffith. They put her target ( _hers_ ) on the defensive, almost on the run. When she ran into Peggy in the hall, her legendary composure ruffled, Dottie knew she would never have a better chance.

 

So she took it. It was everything she’d dreamed of.

 

Standing over Peggy on the floor, her knife drawn, was everything Anya should have been. This was the true moment when she conquered Snow White. So, of course, the SSR men burst in and ruined everything. Not only would she likely not get another chance at Peggy, she couldn’t even retain her cover as Dottie. It was very difficult to sleep on a dentist’s office floor – there were few places to attach handcuffs.

 

The next day, she lost the dentist’s office as well. But she was at least able to get some measure of revenge by killing one of them and putting another on the ropes. He had impressed her; she’d underestimated him for his crutch and he’d used that brilliantly.

 

She hoped, if it came to another confrontation, she’d have the chance to kill him. He would almost make up for losing the chance at Peggy. Part of her even wondered idly, as she gassed the movie theatre and shot the guard at Stark’s private airline, if they were in love. Peggy had liked that sickly boy in the picture – clearly, she saw deeper than the physical.

 

How deeply would she have seen past Aleksandr?

 

It had her ( _every single one of her_ ) on edge, thinking about Peggy. Fennhoff might have noticed if he wasn’t so distracted with his own revenge – or he might not have. It hardly compromised her efficiency. In fact, the Doctor was likely very amenable to how much she hurt Stark – _how dare he not remember Ida, how dare the nights she felt most like a woman mean nothing to him_?

 

It softened him up for the grand finale.

 

When Peggy came, holding her and Fennhoff at gunpoint, her own composure snapped. Dottie giggled as Petra attacked and, for the first time in years, Sasha _screamed_. Her blood was boiling too hot to lie – she knew her words were ineffective, deep down, that they showed more of her weakness than agitating Peggy’s. She didn’t care. She wanted Peggy to know it wasn’t fair. She _wanted_ Peggy to know that she didn’t deserve her beauty and her charm and her princes when all Dottie had was the mirror, when all Petra had was day after day of killing herself just to be seen as worthy, when all Sasha had was a book they’d snatched from her – _it wasn’t **FAIR!!**_

 

She’d never used a baseball bat before (it was the American pastime, wasn’t it), but she didn’t care. Sasha wanted Peggy Carter to _break_.

 

Maybe, once she was broken, it would be easier for a thing like Sasha to become her.

 

Peggy stayed strong. The window Peggy pushed her through hadn’t. But she’d been right, watching the Queen as Petra all those years ago – people could survive falls. All she had to do was figure out who had survived the fall and who she’d be next.

 

The game wasn’t over yet. Not until she had Snow White’s heart.

 


End file.
